Apple to retain, redesign plastic MacBook family — Once rumored for extinction, Apple's entry-level polycarbonate MacBooks are on the verge of a refresh that will solidify them at the base of the Mac maker's notebook offerings for the foreseeable future, AppleInsider has learned.

Arterial traffic available on Google Maps — Commuters have long relied on traffic sites to help them determine their last-minute path around poor traffic on the highway. But if the traffic looks bad on the highways, you'll probably want to know how it looks on the alternate routes through arterials.

In the future, everyone will monetize their 15 minutes — We first launched the YouTube Partnership Program (YPP) to help some of our more popular users make money from their videos on YouTube. While we've focused on accepting prolific users who regularly produce videos that reach a wide audience …

Microsoft apologizes for race-swap photo incident — Microsoft apologized Tuesday for using photo editing techniques to change the race of a person depicted on the company's Web site. — In a photo on its U.S. Web site">photo on the company's U.S. Web site, three businesspeople—one black …

Microsoft sucks at Photoshop — Officially. — Update: Microsoft tells CNET, “We are looking into the details of this situation. We apologize and are in the process of pulling down the [Polish] image.” — Update 2: And... it's down. The un-shopped image is now up on the Polish site …

Massive Twitter Cross-Site Scripting Vulnerability — [NOTE: As if the attention-grabbing title ruining the surprise for you wasn't bad enough, I've got some more bad news. We let Twitter (via Kevin Rose) know about this before it went live but we think somebody saw the Test ! . ]

Looking for great stuff to read? — Where do Arianna Huffington and Thomas Friedman go to get different perspectives on the news? Which economics sites does Nobel prize winner Paul Krugman read? What sites and blogs do the editors of Lifehacker, Boing Boing and Kottke read?

Apple adds malware blocker in Snow Leopard — Apple's commercials may give the impression that Macs are virus-free (.mov) but the company isn't taking any chances with the newest Mac OS X refresh. — Apple has quietly added a new Snow Leopard feature to scan software downloads for malware …

15 U.S. states with the fastest broadband Internet speeds — Data courtesy the CWA. — When it comes to Internet speed, the U.S. is still far down the ladder of industrialized nations, ranking 28th behind leaders South Korea, Japan, Sweden and Holland, according to a study by a labor union for telecommunications workers.

The Myth Behind Craigslist: It's Not Maximizing Revenue Potential — We pointed this out a few years back, but there's this persistent myth behind Craigslist that reporters love to repeat, and it's just not true. The latest is that it shows up in an otherwise excellent profile of Craigslist by Gary Wolf in the latest Wired Magazine.

Blu-ray tanks in PCs — DVD-RW drives will continue to dominate through at least 2013, says iSuppli — Computerworld - Despite a rapid rise in the sale of consumer Blu-ray Disc players due to a drop in prices and an increase in high-definition movie content, Blu-ray players in PCs …

Chipotle Refries Burrito-Ordering iPhone App — This is not going to help the summer diet. After a seven-month delay to get its systems tuned up, Chipotle Mexican Grill's (CMG) app for Apple (AAPL) iPhones is back in the app store. — The app allows you to customize, order, and pay for a meal at your local Chipotle.

The Sinister March of Net Niceness — Wikipedia, once an internet free-for-all, has announced it will now screen changes to certain articles. The New York Times' ethics columnist, meanwhile, is joining the eternal backlash against anonymous blogging. Two steps toward a nice, peaceful, boring and neutered internet.

Motorola holding Android event on September 10th — Hello, Android. Are you ready for the moment you've been waiting for, Moto fans? It looks like Motorola is finally getting ready to dish at least some preliminary info with regards to its Android efforts.

Google patches severe Chrome vulnerabilities — Google has fixed two high-severity vulnerabilities in the stable version of its Chrome browser that could have let an attacker remotely take over a person's computer. — With one attack on Google's V8 JavaScript engine …

Former Facebook CFO Gideon Yu Joins Khosla Ventures — Gideon Yu, the former Facebook CFO unceremoniously shown the door in late March, has joined Khosla Ventures as a General Partner, we've heard from multiple sources. — Prior to Facebook, Yu has held positions at Yahoo (SVP Finance) …

Lazyfeed Goes Live For Everyone — We've been seeing a lot of projects and startups trying to speed up RSS feeds. Today, a service is launching that addresses some of the issues with a different user-interface. Lazyfeed, the realtime interest feed reader that launched last month …

The Pirate Bay Returns With Guns Blazing — When The Pirate Bay was shut down yesterday many believed that this was the end for the Internet's largest BitTorrent tracker. — However, despite the fact that the site is set to be sold later this week, the Pirate Bay team worked around the clock …